Bush's Wooden-Headedness Kills

by Ray McGovern

President George W. Bush is convinced, in the
face of all evidence to the contrary, that he is on the right course in the
war in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism. He says he will not change his
mind. Thus, we are at an historic moment; and we would be well advised to see
what light historians might shed on our current predicament in Iraq and the
basic (but unanswered) question as to why so many people resort to terrorism
against us.

Historian Barbara Tuchman addressed the kind of situation we face at this juncture
in our country’s history in her best-selling book, The
March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam. (Had she lived, she surely would
have updated the book to take Iraq into account).

Tuchman wrote:

"Wooden-headedness...plays a remarkably large role in government.
It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions
while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according
to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts."

Tuchman referred in this context to 16th century Philip II of Spain
as the Nobel-laureate (so to speak) woodenhead of all time: "No experience
of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence."
Comparisons, I know, can be invidious, but Philip amassed too much power and
drained state revenues by failed adventures overseas, leading to Spain’s decline.
Sadly, Tuchman, who died in 1989, cannot opine as to whether history will see
George W. Bush as having displaced Philip as supreme woodenhead. Bush would
have a good shot at it, it seems to me.

In her book, Tuchman emphasized that courtiers can reinforce the ruler’s certitude,
as was the case with Philip, and is the now the case with George. And if the
courtiers are really good at it, they are awarded the Medal of Freedom – as was
the case with former CIA director George Tenet, former Army General Tommy Franks,
and former U.S. proconsul in Baghdad Paul Bremer – each of whom richly deserved
a Heck of a job, Brownie-type salute. As Tuchman pointed out:

"Once a policy has been adopted and implemented, all subsequent activity
becomes an effort to justify it...Adjustment is painful. For the ruler it is
easier, once he has entered the policy box, to stay inside. For the lesser official
it is better...not to make waves, not to press evidence that the chief will
find painful to accept. Psychologists call the process of screening out discordant
information 'cognitive dissonance,' an academic disguise for 'Don’t confuse
me with the facts.'"

Bush’s genius is that he knows this instinctively – without having to take Tuchman’s
book to read in Crawford. And, by all signs, he likes it that way. That is why
he has assembled a truly amazing array of sycophants around him, whose only
pedigree is loyalty to George W. Bush.

And that is precisely why we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
(VIPS), in our first Memorandum for the President (Feb. 5, 2003), closed with
this admonition:

"After watching Secretary Powell today [giving his speech at
the U.N.], we are convinced that you would be better served if you widened
the discussion beyond violations of Resolution 1441, and beyond the circle
of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling
reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely
to be catastrophic."

Our views, and those of others – like Scott Ritter, who knew more about what
had happened to Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" than virtually
anyone – made no dent in the wooden head. Not that the president really believed
there were such weapons there. If he did, he was badly misled by Vice President
Dick Cheney, who was well aware that the "evidence," such as it was,
was bogus. Senior White House officials told my former colleagues at CIA eight
months before the war that they needed to focus on "regime change,"
not WMD. And the White House did not wish to hear any more about WMD from CIA’s
super-source – the Iraqi foreign minister, whom CIA operations officers had "turned"
to work in place for the U.S. rather than Saddam.

The Attack on Iraq and Terrorism

In the same 5 Feb. 03 Memorandum, we strongly
warned the president (as did many others) of the consequences, should he order
our troops to invade Iraq:

"It is our view that an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing
recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future. Far from
eliminating the threat it would enhance it exponentially."

We cited a CIA study done the previous fall that pointed out:

"The forces fueling hatred of the U.S. and fueling al-Qaeda
recruiting are not being addressed...the underlying causes that drive
terrorists will persist."

And we noted that that CIA report cited a 2002 Gallup poll of almost 10,000
Muslims in nine countries in which respondents described the United States as
"ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked and biased."
We hoped against hope that someone could break through the coterie around President
George W. Bush and give him a chance to hear why "they hate us." Someone,
for example, from the U.S. Defense Science Board, a panel established to provide
independent advice to the secretary of defense, which on Sept. 23, 2004 completed
on an unclassified study on "Strategic Communication." With little
risk to their day-jobs, that distinguished board directly contradicted the line
taken by the president:

"Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our
policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they
see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights,
and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively
see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan,
and the Gulf States. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about
bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than
self-serving hypocrisy..."

It is hard to guess whether such straight talk might make a dent in presidential
wood. The pity is that the palace guard around him headed by centurion-in-chief
Cheney can, and does, keep such information from getting through. Even if the
president were to read the New York Times, as many of us still do, he
would have had to wait two months for the "paper of record" to put
this story on the record and, even then, he would have been shortchanged.

Times writer Thom Shanker, to his credit, wrote a story on the findings
of the Defense Science Board panel on Nov. 24, 2004 (better two months late
than never). Shanker, too, cited the paragraph immediately above, but only the
first and last sentences survived. To someone’s discredit, the offending middle
sentence was surgically removed before the paper went to press.

NIE Ducks Key Issues

The latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)
titled "The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland," is a disappointment,
at least judging from its declassified Key Judgments that were made public on
July 17. The judgments caused a stir by describing a "persistent and evolving
terrorist threat" and pointing out that al-Qaeda has secured safe haven
in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

And then came the "mushroom-cloud" warning:

"Al-Qaeda will continue to try to acquire and employ chemical, biological,
radiological, or nuclear material in attacks and would not hesitate to use them
if it develops what it deems is sufficient capability."

Now that I’ve got your attention, I must tell you there is in the Key Judgments
absolutely no hint as to how likely it might be that al-Qaeda will be able
to acquire such material. The message seems to be simply: Be afraid. Let us
"assess" and "judge," but don’t ask us about sources or
provenance.

The Unaddressed Why of It All

Worse still, the Key Judgments throw no light
at all on why al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups would want to use such weapons
against the U.S. With this key element missing, the paper reads like a long
police bulletin: Be alert; heightened threat; terrorists want to do bad things
to us. We don’t know if they can; but "we assess" they will try to
do very bad things...and don’t ask us why. They’re evildoers; is that not enough
for you?

The estimate bears the earmarks of having been drafted originally by law enforcement
agencies like the Department of Homeland Security, whose portfolio include terrorist
threats to the U.S., and the FBI. There are pitfalls here. There is a tendency
to inflate the threat, when one has a parochial interest in building up one’s
capacity to deal with it

In the past, the Pentagon would routinely magnify external threats by writing
what we disdainfully called "budgetary intelligence" to justify burgeoning
budgets. There is more than a whiff of that in the Key Judgments. The National
Intelligence Council, which has purview over NIEs, is supposed to monitor this.
But there is no sign in the Key Judgments that judicious restraint has been
applied.

So, even if the president and Cheney wished to know what actually fuels all
this terrorism, they would receive little if any help from this estimate.

Help Needed

And since 9/11, the Michael "Heck-of-a-Job-Brownie"
Browns have proliferated in the national security apparatus almost as quickly
as lapel flag-pins.

Ms. Fran Townsend, the young woman with the portfolio for terrorism at the
National Security Council seems ill suited to the job. She confessed to being
frustrated at al-Qaeda’s success in rebuilding its infrastructure and links
to affiliates and the fact that Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants have
found safe haven, as the estimate makes clear.

And she was far from comfortable responding to journalists’ questions, as can
be seen from her answer to this one:

Q. The president was warned before the war that this was actually
going to help al-Qaeda gain influence...Isn’t that something the president
ignored?

A. But you’re assuming this is a zero-sum game, which is what I don’t
understand. The fact is, we are harassing them in Afghanistan. We’re harassing
them in Iraq. We’re harassing them in other ways non-militarily around
the world. And the answer is, every time you poke the hornet’s nest, they
are bound to come back and push back on you. That doesn’t suggest to me
that we shouldn’t be doing it.

Is this what passes for a strategic plan to counter terrorists? If so, it certainly
highlights the need for adult supervision in the White House....and for creating
the capability to prepare honest, sophisticated estimates, which in turn can
enable policies of some vision and imagination.

But all this matters little, if wooden-headedness continues to prevail with
the president and Cheney. As long as they are permitted to preside over keystone-cops
law enforcement operations, with an occasional military surge here and there,
the men and women in our armed forces, and the rest of us, will be in greater
danger.

In the end, though, wood is not difficult to drill through with the proper
tools.

Thanks to the prescience and courage of those who crafted our Constitution,
a wood-tool is available. It is a precision tool that, with some courage, can
be employed almost immediately. It is called impeachment, the orderly
political process the Founders left to us for use when the president and/or
vice president or other high official needs to be removed to save the Republic.

Let the members of Congress, who enjoy calling one another "distinguished,"
distinguish themselves by rising to the occasion. As Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. reminded us at another such juncture, that there is such a thing as too
late. Too-late has already come to more than 3,600 young men and women in our
armed forces, as well as thousands now missing limbs and other once functional
parts of their bodies and minds. Not to mention the carnage visited on hundreds
of thousands more whose only sin is that they are Iraqis.